Audio 3:47
Drug driving 'the new problem on our roads'

Lucy CarterUpdated
Mon 6 Jan 2014, 9:16 AM AEDT

New South Wales Police have expressed alarm over the numbers of drivers being caught under the influence of illicit drugs. The rate of drivers who tested positive for drugs in random tests last year was nearly five times that for drink driving. Police say they're looking at new technology to allow even more people to be drug tested.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: New South Wales police say they're alarmed by the number of drivers being caught behind the wheel while under the influence of illicit drugs.

Current roadside drug testing can establish in under 10 minutes whether a driver has recently used marijuana or amphetamine-type substances like ice, speed or ecstasy.

AM's Lucy Carter spoke a short time ago with New South Wales assistant commissioner John Hartley, who says that drivers on drugs are now being caught up to five times more often than drunk drivers.

JOHN HARTLEY: Figures are there to be seen. We knew drink driving was a big issue many years ago. That's becoming less and less and drug driving is starting to move forward as the new problem on our roads.

LUCY CARTER: How often are New South Wales Police conducting random drug tests?

JOHN HARTLEY: Look, we have operations conducted every week across the whole state so it's a big state but we do about 33,000 random drug tests per year and we'll increase that this year. We're moving more into distance drive areas.

LUCY CARTER: And how does this compare to the number of people being randomly breath tested for alcohol?

JOHN HARTLEY: Look, breath testing, we've conducted about 4.8 million tests this last year so it's a record number of tests, a high number, 24-7 across the whole of the state, you know, 15,000, 20,000 tests per day conducted.

So we are still conducting drink driving tests but drug driving is a new phenomenon for us.

LUCY CARTER: How many people are being caught sort of proportionally from each?

JOHN HARTLEY: Yeah, look the figures are about one in 45, one in 46 for every drug test, we are able to get one in 46 is affected. Drink driving it is about one in every 200 people are over the limit so it's a different figure but drug testing is more targeted. We use intelligence to go to areas we know people are using drugs so hence we'll get a higher strike rate.

LUCY CARTER: How are these roadside drug tests conducted?

JOHN HARTLEY: Look, it's quite simple. The first test is a roadside test where you lick a sample swab, provide saliva that's placed in a solution on the roadside and tested and then sort of stripes come up on the test if its positive for any sort of drugs that we are testing for which is methamphetamine, ecstasy and cannabis.

If that turns positive you go then inside a vehicle and have a further saliva test with a more scientific machine that does more analysing. If that's positive the sample is sent off to a laboratory for a confirmation test.

LUCY CARTER: I understand that testing for drugs is significantly more expensive than testing for alcohol. Do police have to suspect drug use before they test?

JOHN HARTLEY: Look, no we don't. For random drug testing we can test anyone, any time of course. It is more expensive and probably importantly, it's more complicated and more time consuming so you can do less tests on the roadside.

A drink driving test takes 30 seconds at the maximum I suppose whereas a drug test can take six, seven, eight or 10 minutes.

LUCY CARTER: Do police hope to eventually drug test every driver in Australia that they pull over?

JOHN HARTLEY: Look, well I can speak for New South Wales, we certainly are looking at new technology and it'll change over time because everybody is using drug testing technology now. The private companies, the large companies are testing workers on site, the mining companies are testing workers.

So the technology will improve greatly and be more simplified and hopefully each police vehicle will then be able to have a device in it that tests for drugs on the roadside.

LUCY CARTER: Do you think that the message isn't getting through? I mean we've had such an effective campaign against drink driving, do you think there now needs to be some sort of more important campaign against drug driving?

JOHN HARTLEY: Look, we're waiting on some pretty important research to come through from the Centre for Road Safety in New South Wales to tell us about the extent of drink driving and the extent of drug driving in comparison and once the evidence of that data will then determine what our next steps will be.

TONY EASTLEY: The New South Wales assistant police commissioner, John Hartley, speaking there with AM's Lucy Carter.